3 ms·

> Vendors would love to accept a payment method with the transaction fees of Bitcoin Cash instead of the transaction fees of Visa and MasterCard. Vendors love

> Vendors would love to accept a payment method with the transaction fees of Bitcoin Cash instead of the transaction fees of Visa and MasterCard. Vendors love to accept what their customers pay them with. Bitcoiners, etc still regularly post Twitter and forum posts when they find some random mom and pop store somewhere that actually takes BTC. Literally on the frontpage of the reddit bitcoin sub right now: https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/16k82kk/bitcoin_accepted_at_county_childrens_fair/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/16k82kk/bitcoin_ac... YES! So much adoption it's still a novelty worth putting on the internet! If customers were asking to pay with BTC they would figure out a way to take it. Except customers don't so they don't because other than a tiny number of crypto zealots this space isn't anything other than something you gamble with.

AnthonyMouse 3y ago
Customers don't because the IRS is ridiculous, presumably on purpose. If you sell cryptocurrency for more than you paid for it you have a capital gain. Okay, sure, if you made a million dollars then you owe taxes on a million dollars. But things like this commonly have exemptions for small transactions. If you pay for a $2 cup of coffee and had a capital gain of $0.03 for which you might owe less than one half of one cent in tax, it's obviously inefficient to require reporting for this. And it tends to even out because nobody is going to report a $0.03 capital loss either. So it makes sense to exempt transactions below some threshold. But for this they apparently don't. Which is hard to explain outside of malice. And then people say "well nobody wants to use it."
- kkielhofner 3y ago
  > Customers don't because the IRS is ridiculous, presumably on purpose. I have mixed feelings about the IRS too but people need to remember they are chartered to enforce the law as it is defined. The SEC and IRS has interpreted (IMO correctly) that according to current law and regulations crypto transactions are a taxable event as you describe. What you're not understanding is that many people actually appreciate this handling of crypto because of the benefit under current capital gains regulations (long-term capital gains). Another fundamental conflict in what crypto is and isn't, what the crypto community wants it to be, etc. It's yet another one of those "crypto people don't understand the world as it is". They are trying to bend the world to them and not the other way around. It's not working and it never will. You're never going to have what is essentially product market fit if you live in an alternate universe like the crypto community. > So it makes sense to exempt transactions below some threshold. But for this they apparently don't. Which is hard to explain outside of malice. Contrary to popular belief in the crypto community there isn't some cabal scheming to "keep crypto down" or any such nonsense as we can see now by the traditional investment community trying to offer bitcoin ETFs, etc. It's an asset and even though the cryto community falls back to "it's about the tech", "save the world", etc in a bear market we all know they're actually all about gambling in fiat. Wait for a bull market for "have fun staying poor" and endless posts about the value in fiat to come back in full force. If anything it's just another thing to provide tax revenue to the US Treasury. They don't care what you're trading as long as you follow the tax code. With the scheme you have described there are obvious avoision loopholes, such as people avoiding taxable events altogether by just executing all of their trades in amounts under the threshold. Then what do you do, come up with some complicated scheme to define it under total transaction amount in a year for a given entity? This will then be abused because there are all kinds of things you can do to game that. If such a legal framework were implemented I guarantee the next product from exchanges would be schemes to avoid taxation to automatically execute trades to fit your loophole. The other issue is knock-on effects - this regulation would have to apply evenly across other asset classes as any language to specifically exempt crypto would also be nebulous and very gameable. Why should crypto have a fundamental tax advantage over other asset classes? The tax code is already a byzantine mess and this would only add to that. > And then people say "well nobody wants to use it." It's clear people don't want to use it, they want to gamble. There are and have been "pro-crypto" politicians but the number of voters who support this are the tiny handful of crypto zealots that don't remotely move the needle in an election. Crypto doesn't get votes because the vast majority of people see it for what it is - a toy to gamble with and once again the actual adoption numbers, demand, etc reflects that.
  - AnthonyMouse 3y ago
    > I have mixed feelings about the IRS too but people need to remember they are chartered to enforce the law as it is defined. The issue is that they're classifying it as an investment instead of a currency but the rules for investments make in impractical to use as a currency. Conceivably this could be better suited to new legislation, but it's not obvious that they couldn't have done something more sensible, such as treating large holdings as investments and small holdings as currency. > we can see now by the traditional investment community trying to offer bitcoin ETFs, etc. Banks will do whatever makes them money. Offering ETFs of any kind where they get a vig makes them money. Replacing existing payment networks where they currently get $0.30 + 2.9% with new ones where the transaction fees are lower and go to someone else costs them money. > With the scheme you have described there are obvious avoision loopholes, such as people avoiding taxable events altogether by just executing all of their trades in amounts under the threshold. This is not a new problem. There is a $200 personal exemption for foreign currency. If you have a million dollars worth of Euros and the Euro is up against the dollar and you execute 5025 separate trades of Euros for US dollars in the amount of $199 each, what do you imagine happens? > The other issue is knock-on effects - this regulation would have to apply evenly across other asset classes as any language to specifically exempt crypto would also be nebulous and very gameable. It would be great to be able to use fractional shares of market ETFs as a global digital currency too. > It's clear people don't want to use it, they want to gamble. The gamblers want to gamble. I'm still not clear on why a global digital payments system with lower transaction fees than credit cards should have no market in a non-adversarial regulatory environment. That seems like something people would want.

AnthonyMouse 3y ago

Customers don't because the IRS is ridiculous, presumably on purpose. If you sell cryptocurrency for more than you paid for it you have a capital gain. Okay, sure, if you made a million dollars then you owe taxes on a million dollars. But things like this commonly have exemptions for small transactions. If you pay for a $2 cup of coffee and had a capital gain of $0.03 for which you might owe less than one half of one cent in tax, it's obviously inefficient to require reporting for this. And it tends to even out because nobody is going to report a $0.03 capital loss either. So it makes sense to exempt transactions below some threshold. But for this they apparently don't. Which is hard to explain outside of malice. And then people say "well nobody wants to use it."

kkielhofner 3y ago
> Customers don't because the IRS is ridiculous, presumably on purpose. I have mixed feelings about the IRS too but people need to remember they are chartered to enforce the law as it is defined. The SEC and IRS has interpreted (IMO correctly) that according to current law and regulations crypto transactions are a taxable event as you describe. What you're not understanding is that many people actually appreciate this handling of crypto because of the benefit under current capital gains regulations (long-term capital gains). Another fundamental conflict in what crypto is and isn't, what the crypto community wants it to be, etc. It's yet another one of those "crypto people don't understand the world as it is". They are trying to bend the world to them and not the other way around. It's not working and it never will. You're never going to have what is essentially product market fit if you live in an alternate universe like the crypto community. > So it makes sense to exempt transactions below some threshold. But for this they apparently don't. Which is hard to explain outside of malice. Contrary to popular belief in the crypto community there isn't some cabal scheming to "keep crypto down" or any such nonsense as we can see now by the traditional investment community trying to offer bitcoin ETFs, etc. It's an asset and even though the cryto community falls back to "it's about the tech", "save the world", etc in a bear market we all know they're actually all about gambling in fiat. Wait for a bull market for "have fun staying poor" and endless posts about the value in fiat to come back in full force. If anything it's just another thing to provide tax revenue to the US Treasury. They don't care what you're trading as long as you follow the tax code. With the scheme you have described there are obvious avoision loopholes, such as people avoiding taxable events altogether by just executing all of their trades in amounts under the threshold. Then what do you do, come up with some complicated scheme to define it under total transaction amount in a year for a given entity? This will then be abused because there are all kinds of things you can do to game that. If such a legal framework were implemented I guarantee the next product from exchanges would be schemes to avoid taxation to automatically execute trades to fit your loophole. The other issue is knock-on effects - this regulation would have to apply evenly across other asset classes as any language to specifically exempt crypto would also be nebulous and very gameable. Why should crypto have a fundamental tax advantage over other asset classes? The tax code is already a byzantine mess and this would only add to that. > And then people say "well nobody wants to use it." It's clear people don't want to use it, they want to gamble. There are and have been "pro-crypto" politicians but the number of voters who support this are the tiny handful of crypto zealots that don't remotely move the needle in an election. Crypto doesn't get votes because the vast majority of people see it for what it is - a toy to gamble with and once again the actual adoption numbers, demand, etc reflects that.
- AnthonyMouse 3y ago
  > I have mixed feelings about the IRS too but people need to remember they are chartered to enforce the law as it is defined. The issue is that they're classifying it as an investment instead of a currency but the rules for investments make in impractical to use as a currency. Conceivably this could be better suited to new legislation, but it's not obvious that they couldn't have done something more sensible, such as treating large holdings as investments and small holdings as currency. > we can see now by the traditional investment community trying to offer bitcoin ETFs, etc. Banks will do whatever makes them money. Offering ETFs of any kind where they get a vig makes them money. Replacing existing payment networks where they currently get $0.30 + 2.9% with new ones where the transaction fees are lower and go to someone else costs them money. > With the scheme you have described there are obvious avoision loopholes, such as people avoiding taxable events altogether by just executing all of their trades in amounts under the threshold. This is not a new problem. There is a $200 personal exemption for foreign currency. If you have a million dollars worth of Euros and the Euro is up against the dollar and you execute 5025 separate trades of Euros for US dollars in the amount of $199 each, what do you imagine happens? > The other issue is knock-on effects - this regulation would have to apply evenly across other asset classes as any language to specifically exempt crypto would also be nebulous and very gameable. It would be great to be able to use fractional shares of market ETFs as a global digital currency too. > It's clear people don't want to use it, they want to gamble. The gamblers want to gamble. I'm still not clear on why a global digital payments system with lower transaction fees than credit cards should have no market in a non-adversarial regulatory environment. That seems like something people would want.